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dmfalk
dmfalk's Gallery (180)

[Story] Oberon: A Letter to Home
[Story] Mimzy's Sigh
oberonletter.doc
Keywords male 1114939, human 100535, sci-fi 4408, science fiction 1767, letter 412, colonisation 2, letter to home 1
Oberon: A Letter to Home

by Dennis M. Falk

28 February 2011


What follows is a letter written some 200 years from now by a college student considering staying on the colony planet of Oberon, some 22 light-years away (itself celebrating 100 years of colonisation) after he graduates.


Dear Mom & Dad,

Sure glad that mail now goes through subspace, instead of taking 22 years of 44 years, or even 440 years, to get to you!

Anyway, I have settled into my apartment on one of Oberon City's beachside islands. As you know, Oberon City was founded on a delta, and the city of 250,000 is built on some two dozen islands. Oberon University, along with the city's other university & college campuses are all located on one island on the north side of the city. I live just west of the City Center, with one island between my home island and there. I can easily see downtown reflecting in the sunlight.

Oberon City, as you know, is the capital and first city of Oberon, one of our first colony planets, and they're now celebrating one Earth-standard century of colonisation. It is the largest city here, as there are only 16 cities on the entire planet with 25,000 people or more, with a total planetwide population of 10 million.

There is no day or night here, since Oberon is tidally-locked with its parent star, a red dwarf, but local time here is measured in 100 10-hour "days", although the planet's year is only 67 Earth days long. It is always sunset here, with a nice orange sun. It rarely gets cold here, as it always varies between 20-30°C, but sometimes it rains here-- There is this permanent hurricane near the middle of the sun-facing side that sometimes sends fierce storms towards the more populated regions, like on the Terminus between "day" and "night", where I live. Because of the weather, that's how Oberon got its name, from a character in Shakespeare who caused fierce storms when he got angry with his wife.

It's a lot of fun here, with many things to do! I thought it would be boring going to a university on a colony planet with a sparse population, but it isn't. I have been enjoying camping and hiking when it isn't class time, and sometimes, my classes take me to great places, like the lands under the great storm. I thought it would always be raining there, but it isn't, but it's also very hot and humid. While there, I got to see ancient ruins of old cities built by the civilisation that used to be here, but died out some 60,000 years ago. There are archeological sites all over the planet, even on the cold nightside. I'm sure enjoying myself!

I did get to meet a girl at a local diner who is also going to Oberon University, but she is a local, unlike me, and she is very sweet. She is also studying archeology, but mostly in studying the ancient books and the language they were written in. The creatures that used to live here sure did have a beautiful writing system!

I'm thinking of staying here and making a life for myself after University, and maybe settle down here. I hope you two, as well as the girls, can come and spend a couple weeks' vacation here- You would have fun, too, and maybe have a second marriage, here-- The permanent sunset here is beautiful!

I'll be writing again soon!

Your son.

1 Mar. 2212

9:75 w4d4y507 (Oberon date & time)
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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by dmfalk
ELO avatar (finally!)
[Poem - Spoken audio] Pink and Yellow Fields
What's this?? A non-furry story entry? On MY Inkbunny?? Deal with it. ;)

This is based on a series of dreams I had while sleeping this morning, which take place on an extrasolar planet some 22 light-years away, some 200 years from now, and I just felt I needed to write them down and share it, so here it is.

How would you envision life on a tidally-locked colony planet? This is a glimpse of what I think it would be like.
Keywords
male 1,114,939, human 100,535, sci-fi 4,408, science fiction 1,767, letter 412, colonisation 2, letter to home 1
Details
Type: Writing - Document
Published: 13 years, 1 month ago
Rating: General
MD5 Hash for Page 1... Show Find Identical Posts [?]
Stats
80 views
1 favorite
15 comments
BBCode Tags Show [?]
 
15 Comments on this Submission
Leave a Comment...
CyberCornEntropic
CyberCornEntropic
13 years, 1 month ago
link
A good story, presenting scientific speculation in a layman-understandable format with charm and brilliance.  Nice job. :)
dmfalk
dmfalk
13 years, 1 month ago
link
Thank you! :) I was beginning to feel this wasn't one of my better works. I didn't feel that the art of letter writing would disappear, even in the age of email (it's a completely different protocol in communication), and kept it consistent that most college kids actually have a roughly-middle-school grasp of communicating in English. And yes, this is based exactly on the dreams I had that morning-- College kid writes home just after moving into a beachside apartment....on a distant planet. :) The only thing I didn't mention was that he was listening to a relaxing radio station as he was settling in. Oh, well. :)

I just needed to write what I saw. That's all. :)

Thanks for the comment, as I was feeling very depressed about this. :P

d.m.f.
CyberCornEntropic
CyberCornEntropic
13 years, 1 month ago
link
You're welcome.  I really do need to get into the habit of commenting more on other people's stuff.

Personally, I don't think our present forms of communication will die off as new ones or, rather, new variants of existing ones are invented.  Even nowadays, we're still painting cave drawings, only they're slathered on the sides of buildings and boxcars.  Would letters be any different?  Or radio for that matter?
dmfalk
dmfalk
13 years, 1 month ago
link
Much like how vinyl is still being marketed, in spite the digital age of music....

Besides, you don't get a postmark and a nice stamp in email! ;)

Ironic you mention radio-- The dream started with the sound of a relatively-distant analogue broadcaster, static and all! ;)

d.m.f.
CyberCornEntropic
CyberCornEntropic
13 years, 1 month ago
link
Who knows?  Radio stations could be set up on colony worlds for the novelty factor.  Also, there's the possibility that radio hams could play around on classical radio frequencies while emergency and official services would be using different communications methods and/or frequencies.  A science fiction example might be that on-planet civilians use regular radio while the governmental, emergency, and off-planet services would use subspace.

Also, something I should have mentioned earlier, dreams can be excellent places to mine for ideas.  I've gotten some interesting ideas from mine, although I often wish I'd had the opportunity to write them down before I forgot them. :o
dmfalk
dmfalk
13 years, 1 month ago
link
I see the direction of both broadcasting and point-to-point radio communications eventually merging to a unified cellular system, and a method of transmission that uses the quantum spin rate of photons as a modulatible state. This is already in experimentation today with electrons, but not yet with electromagnetic energy. The signal would appear as a carrier with no apparent information, since there is no change in amplitude, phase or pitch. Such a method would allow ALOT of data through an incredibly small spectrum window, as well as maximum power output with minimum dispersion using far less carrier power than currently used. (The wider the bandwidth, the more energy needed to equal the power of a narrow-bandwidth signal.) This of course would free up a hell of alot of radio frequency space for heritage radio experimenters.

Subspace radio technology would most likely utilise another quantum property- Quantum entanglement. GREAT for interstellar communications and broadcasting! :)

And correct about dreams- They often make for great story fodder, although sometimes I'm reluctant to write some of the ideas I get for one reason or another-- Even if I should, for at the very least, cathartic reasons.

d.m.f.
CyberCornEntropic
CyberCornEntropic
13 years, 1 month ago
link
Interesting stuff there.  Now all we need to do is figure out faster-than-light travel free of relativistic effects in order to take full advantage of subspace radio. :p Personally, I think modern physics is laboring under a few understandable misconceptions.  After all, how can you understand something you don't know exists?

Dreams can be wonky sometimes.  One time, I dreamed I was the giant in The Wizard of Oz who went with Dorothy to see the Wizard because he wanted friends (Mary Sueing in my dreams; how apropos! :D ).  A couple of times, I accidentally "killed" some nightmare creatures that were trying to scare me (ie. the nightmares failed :o ).
dmfalk
dmfalk
13 years, 1 month ago
link
Quantum physics appear to hold some promises for some of the bizarre (to today's thinking) concepts, since it's in that realm that relativistic effects go by the wayside-- Atom transportation has already been done, but we're still decades away from a practical matter transporter system a la Star Trek, plus experiments (also on the atomic level) have also been done regarding quantum entanglement, which seems to defy the lightspeed barrier, not to mention odd light experiments that have resulted in both FTL and ultra-slow photon motion.... And yes, we keep collectively making the same mistake in science, in the belief that our knowledge is absolute, which in reality is evolutionary, which means we don't know everything yet, and what we do know may seem right, but could very well be wrong-- The actual size of the universe, for example, is MUCH bigger than what we can visibly see, as the universe itself expands faster than light can normally travel.

Most of my dreams are fairly mundane, and nightmares are fairly rare, fortunately, but I do get some oddities from time to time... And sometimes they do tell of things that will happen in my life (and have, over the years), but as with most of my dreams, not of the foreboding kind. I am in a house I saw in my dreams in 1971 that we moved into in 1984, for example- A house I never saw before. Life is a strange thing....

d.m.f.
CyberCornEntropic
CyberCornEntropic
13 years, 1 month ago
link
Not only that, but it's possible that stuff we think is now pseudoscientific nonsense might end up become accepted science in the future.  It took plate techtonics somewhere around a century after being conceived of for it to become seriously taken by scientists.  Then there are animals like the okapi that were considered cryptids, which are often not taken seriously by zoologists, but turned out to be real animals.  Who knows?

Personally, I think what we perceive as time may not be a dimension but a vector.  In other words, our travel to the future is actually motion forward through, for example, three temporal dimensions.  This could mean that alternate realities could just be a slight shift in direction away from our own timeline.  Of course, this is mere speculation on part.  I have no idea how to go about trying to prove it.


I very rarely get prophetic dreams, if ever.  The closest I recall was one in my childhood in which I dreamed of getting a Care Bear action figure a few weeks before I got it for Christmas and that could have been just me filling in gaps afterwards.  Apparently, prophesy is not my dreams' strong suit. :p  Most of the time, my dreams seem to be either random goofing around or something like playing an RPG in my sleep. :/
VixyyFox
VixyyFox
13 years, 1 month ago
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I enjoyed it - well written for the three pages, but it seems there should be more...

V.
dmfalk
dmfalk
13 years, 1 month ago
link
Thank you so very much for responding- That made my day! :) Perhaps it could've been longer, but I couldn't think of anything else to say... After all, intersteller postage rates aren't cheap... ;)

d.m.f.
VixyyFox
VixyyFox
13 years, 1 month ago
link
*chuckles... good one...

V.
dmfalk
dmfalk
13 years, 1 month ago
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*grin* :)

d.m.f.
ButtercupSaiyan
ButtercupSaiyan
11 years, 1 month ago
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It's an interesting little soundbyte for a story, definitely needs to be expanded on more to really fire the imagination. Right now, it's a little dry.

Dream stories usually do that, though. They lack focus and push.
dmfalk
dmfalk
11 years, 1 month ago
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Well, it was intended to be a college kid's letter to his family from an exoplanet called Oberon, which is why it was written like it was. Thanks for the +fave. :)

d.m.f.
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